WWUTT 710 Q&A VBS, Dinosaurs, and Church Signs?

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What's a good VBS program your church can use? Are there dinosaurs mentioned in the

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Bible? What's our church building like? And are church signs okay? There are answers to these questions when we

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Understand the Text. This is

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When we Understand the Text, a daily Bible study through the Word of Christ that we may have the mind of Christ.

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Find transcripts to all our videos on our website www .wutt .com.

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Now here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. So at the time that we're recording this,

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I've not yet left for the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, which is done.

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It's done by the time this airs, but yeah, it hasn't happened yet. But we have just finished up our

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VBS, Vacation Bible School at our church. What'd you think? It was awesome. Good deal.

01:02

It was totally awesome. By the last day, all of our kids had the review questions correct, and they were even expounding upon them.

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Yeah, it was really neat. And they were kindergarten through second graders. That was a grade that you had. Yeah. Yep.

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So the sermon that I did following the VBS week was the passage that we were teaching our kids through the week.

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So Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, and that's the sermon that you'll hear on this podcast this coming

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Sunday. You'll hear that sermon. So there's folks that have asked us what we do VBS wise.

01:35

We do not follow LifeWay's curriculum. The first couple of years when I came to the church, I was the worship director at that time, and we did do

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LifeWay. That wasn't my deal. I didn't have any say in that. We did that only two years in a row.

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It was 2010 and 2011. And then after that, never did another LifeWay series.

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So we do all of our VBSs in -house. And we have a great gal.

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Her name is Jubilee, and she's not done all of our VBSs. She's done the last three, though, and does a tremendous job.

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She does. It's all straight from the word of God. All of the activities and the games that kids do during the week are tied in with the lesson.

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So anyway, I wouldn't even be able to give you an example of like this day, we studied this, and our game was this, and the craft was this, and it all tied into the lesson.

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But she just has a great knack for that. For the first day, it was Ephesians 2 .1.

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And outside, our game was to... Okay, Ephesians 2 .1 is,

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For you were once dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

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I'm going on. I think I've gone past verse one now, but anyway. Well, it might've been one and two. I don't remember if it was specifically just one, but it was dead in your trespasses.

02:59

Right. Okay. So then outside, we rolled, or no, we shot the

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Nerf guns and knocked over the pop cans. Pop cans. Okay. The soda cans.

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My six shooter Nerf guns. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then afterward, after they had a good time doing that, she gathered them all over and she's like, okay, so they were dead.

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And is there anything to bring them back to life? And it was like, no, because they were dead in their trespasses.

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There you go. Yeah. It was really cute. So we're able to use the game even to teach the kids more about what

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Ephesians 2 .1 means. Right. And like I said, she has a... And then we made graveyards, grave markers.

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The tombstones. Tombstones. Yes. Thank you. And we wrote sins on them.

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And so the kids had some very... Since they're pre -writers in my class, they had some very interesting pictures.

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And the parents got them and they're like, what is this? And probably not the darkest of sins either.

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Well, not quite, but kind of. They have an imagination. Our six and seven year olds haven't tried to kill anybody.

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True. Except kick... But the monsters. Kick their three -year -old brother or sister down the stairs or something like that. And be mean to mom.

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Yeah. Okay. Disrespecting mom and dad. Yes. That was on there a lot. But yeah.

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Yeah. She does a tremendous job. And I would encourage you to do the same. If there is a way that you can get a team of people together to write curriculum and come up with a vacation

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Bible school program for your church, I would encourage you to do it in -house.

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Not trying to buy a program or spending all that money on all the decorations and stuff like that that come with everything.

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Because we did all of our decorations ourselves. And speaking of decorations, to encompass this a little bit more, for those who don't follow us on Twitter or maybe

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Facebook even, but it was Wild West. That was our theme. The Old West was our theme.

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Yeah. Made alive. Made alive. Yeah. With the Nerf guns and then the tombstone, now you can kind of put it together.

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But anyway. Right. You can see how the Old West theme that was. Yeah. It was very clever. And I remember me and her and Raymond, her husband, we were standing around before church one day talking about what can we do for a

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VBS this year? And somehow Old West came up and it was like, hey, wanted dead or alive.

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But I think Jubilee took the softer approach. Yes. Little kids, we're not going to do dead or alive.

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So we did made alive. Right. Wanted by God, made alive.

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So I thought that was great. It was a great theme. It was a terrific week. Kids had a blast.

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I never had an occasion, like part of my role was to walk around with a video camera and you can watch the highlight video.

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We put it on our church website and everything. That was part of my role, doing the lead songs, walking around with a video camera.

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And every class that I walked into, the kids were engaged, they were listening to the lesson or they were loving the craft or whatever it is that they had going on at the time that I walked in the class.

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It was just a great week. And we didn't have an abundance of kids. It wasn't like we had 200 kids. Right. No.

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I think over the course of the week, I think it was three, four dozen maybe. Yeah. Not too many.

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At the most. But that was great too, because then you had two teachers per class and it was a lot more one -on -one focus.

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It was a lot easier too. Because, I mean, just to answer all the questions and get the right point across and explain yourself in a way that they understand.

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Sometimes that takes a couple times. Yeah. So. I had a pastor, a local pastor, text me while we were in the middle of our

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VBS week. Oh yeah? And he saw like the ad that we put on Facebook or the flyer, you know, come to our

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VBS week, register by giving us your kids' names, send it to this email address, that sort of thing. Right.

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And so he saw it and he thought even the ad that we were posting on Facebook was so professional looking that he texted me and said, hey, are you doing

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Lifeways VBS? And when you're done, could you give me your stuff? Because we've got like a missions trip we're taking and we'll just do that VBS.

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I honestly, I had a bit of pride when I texted him back and I said, no, we do all of our

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VBS programs in -house. Repent. Repent. Terrible. We are not giving

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Lifeway our money. In that sense. Yeah. And there are poor and terrible

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VBS programs out there. And I know that we've, like I said, we've done

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Lifeways before. And so we've, it was kind of like we were taking Lifeways program and we were making it more biblical than it already was.

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Even the videos and things like that. They showed the skits were fun and the kids enjoyed them, but it just wasn't deep enough as far as the theology.

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Now we've got the meat and potatoes. Yeah. And that's good with the Western theme. I know, right? The meat and potatoes.

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We got the chili. That's right. I'm not one of those guys that's opposed to VBS programs.

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I think they're great, especially in the summertime when you probably don't have something as regular happening and families are going on vacation and people come and go.

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New families will move in. You might have some families that move away. And so I think a vacation

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Bible school program is terrific. But like with everything else that you do in your church, make sure that it is grounded in the word of God and the gospel is clearly presented to the children.

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And you're working for the Lord. Not for, not to please anybody. Is that what you're going?

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Well, just not to complain about it. Like it's your duty. Oh, yeah. Right. It's actually like...

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Oh, VBS week. Yeah. I mean, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work, but it's, and it's difficult to keep your mind in the right place, but it's really important to keep your mind not on you, but on God, so that way you can point the way to the kids.

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And don't make the mistake of most VBS programs by doing an altar call at the end. Don't do it.

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Yeah. We just asked if they had any questions. Right. Don't pray prayers of salvation with the kids.

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Just teach them the Bible over the course of the week. And then we've got a big...

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Like I said, I do a sermon that wraps everything up. So I'm presenting to the adults, here's what your kids learned this week.

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So here's what you can be talking about with your children. And it's also kind of one of the few

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Sundays per year where we get the kids in front of everybody. They love it. And they sing the songs and everything like that.

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So, and they're mostly your typical Sunday school songs. It's not like we write a song that goes with VBS or something like that, though there is usually a theme song,

09:45

Fruit of the Spirit one year. Yeah. A couple of years ago. Yep. So anyway. And we had a theme song, but it wasn't really

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Wild West. No, it wasn't. And it wasn't cowboy sounding. But it was solid. It went with the, yeah, it went with the theme of Ephesians 2, 1 through 10.

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Yes. Right. And Jubilee does great actions and teaches kids. And she put in a kick for Aria because Aria wanted her to do a kick so bad.

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It was hilarious. So the kick in there was because... The kick in there was because of Aria. Our three -year -old really wanted to do a kick action to the song.

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So anyway. It was very sweet. But thank you for your questions related to that. I did get a few. They said they saw me saying something about VBS week on Twitter and said, well, what sort of program do you do?

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How do you do it? We do all that in -house. And I'm very grateful for Jubilee and the imagination that she has to write the curriculum that way.

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She astounds me. Yeah. And she's done three consecutive years in a row. It's always been a great VBS program.

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Every time. Most of the questions that we have today begin with, I have a silly question to ask.

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Oh, no. Bring it. Yep. So here we go. This first one is from Daryl, and he says, hello,

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Pastor Gabe and Becky. I have a pretty silly question to ask. My wife and I were listening to last week's

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Q &A, and it sparked an interesting conversation between us. When you mentioned unicorns in the

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King James Version and explained that it meant rhinoceros, my wife had a brain fart and thought you were talking about a

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Triceratops, the dinosaur, three -horned dinosaur. Right. That led to a discussion about dinosaurs and the

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Bible. We were both wondering, is there any scripture that mentions dinosaurs or beasts that could possibly be pertaining to dinosaurs?

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I've always been led to believe dinosaurs were wiped out in the Great Flood. Is this correct? Thank you, and God bless you both.

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I think the Bible very explicitly describes dinosaurs.

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Oh, yeah. You get this question a lot. I do. With Stump the Pastor. Yeah, the kids. Right. They love that question.

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We do this with the kids on Wednesday nights, and they'll do like a Stump the Pastor thing. And even parents, they're sitting back going, oh.

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We want to hear the question about dinosaurs. You can see them all like, hmm.

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One of these boys in their dinosaur shirts is going to ask Pastor Gabe if there's dinosaurs in the

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Bible. But the thing is, the word dinosaur didn't come about in the English lexicon until just a couple hundred years ago.

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And so, of course, that word itself, dinosaur, which means terrible lizard, that word does not appear in the

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Bible. But there are animals described that I think fit the bill for what we know of dinosaurs.

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Right. The fossils that have been uncovered that we have in our museums. In Job chapter 40, beginning in verse 15,

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God is saying to Job, behold, behemoth, which I made as I made you.

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He eats grass like an ox. Behold his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly.

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He makes his tail stiff like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together.

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His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron. He is the first of the works of God.

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Let him who made him bring near his sword. For the mountains yield food for him where all the mighty beasts play.

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Under the lotus plants he lies in the shelter of the reeds and in his marsh. For his shade, the lotus trees cover him.

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The willows of the brooks surround him. Behold, if the river is turbulent, he is not frightened.

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He is confident, though Jordan rushes against his mouth. Can one take him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare?

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And I believe what we are having described for us is something like a Diplodocus or a

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Brachiosaurus, one of the large, four -legged, long -necked dinosaurs, especially when you consider that his tail is stiff like a cedar.

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What else could that possibly be describing but a dinosaur with a massive tail like that? Now, I've heard various scholars try to explain this as well.

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It could be an elephant. The word tail could be also translated as trunk. Some have said it could be the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus, but neither one of them have tails like a cedar.

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No, they don't. Or the rivers that would be stopped up by him if he were to walk into it.

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I mean, that could only describe a dinosaur of that size. He gets a good drink from the rushing water against him.

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Right, exactly. That's what I was saying. That's hilarious. And so, I think that that's...

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How scary would that be to come up on one hiding under a lotus plant? Yeah. Look at that big tree.

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Oh, that's not a tree. Oh, my goodness. That's not a tree. The bush is moving. Run away. Run away. So, that's the first place

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I think that we have an animal described that would be like a dinosaur. And then when you keep going, chapter 41, you have the

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Leviathan. So, these two names that very clearly describe big animals.

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Oh, yeah. Behemoth. Yeah. And then Leviathan. Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook or press down his tongue with a cord?

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Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many pleas to you?

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Will he speak to you soft words? Will he make a covenant with you to take him for your servant forever?

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Will you play with him as with a bird or will you put him on a leash for your girls?

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Will traders bargain over him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?

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Lay your hands on him. Remember the battle. You will not do it again. Behold, the hope of a man is false.

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He is laid low even at the sight of him. No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.

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Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me that I should repay him?

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Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. And then he goes on describing Leviathan.

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I will not keep silence concerning his limbs or his mighty strength or his goodly frame. Who can strip off his outer garment?

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Who would come near him with a bridle? Who can open the doors of his face? Around his teeth is terror.

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His back is made of rows of shields. Shut up closely as with a shield.

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One is so near to another that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another.

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They clasp each other and cannot be separated. His, I like this one, verse 18, his sneezings flash forth light and his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.

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Out of his mouth go flaming torches. Sparks of fire go forth. So what are we hearing described there?

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That's a dragon. And what we typically think of as a dragon, as a mythological creature, you know, great big wings, takes flight, breathes fire.

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They are based on an actual animal because we have throughout many ancient cultures stories of great big giant animals that breathed fire and that had scales like lizards, like what's being described here of Leviathan in Job chapter 41.

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And so what ancient history has described as a dragon is actually what we today call a dinosaur.

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Right. And some of the dinosaurs were fire breathers. So yeah, I do think that's -

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I just figured they had really hot breath. Yep, breathed fire. In fact, some scientists have said that there were certain dinosaurs that based on the cavities inside the skulls that they've uncovered could have housed glands in there that release chemicals when mixed together would have breathed fire.

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Oh, interesting. So there are a few. I can't remember which species they are, but I have read on some of those dinosaurs that scientists think that that could have been a fire breathing dinosaur.

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So that which we would typically call a dragon today was actually a dinosaur according to the ancient peoples.

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Now where are they now? They all died off. I mean, it's like most animals.

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Any animal will go extinct. Or they will evolve. And when I say evolve,

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I don't mean like Darwinian evolution. I'm not talking about macro evolutionary processes. If that was true,

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I would have more than just two arms and two eyes. As a mom to be able to handle your children.

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With four children, two arms and two eyes are just not enough. That's right. So I'm not talking about macro evolutionary processes, but over time animals change.

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And so even as animals change and environments changed, eventually the dinosaurs either changed or they died off.

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And so that's what ended up happening to them. You know, to give you an example of this, just so nobody thinks that I'm going the route of macro evolution.

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Right. I'm a young earth creationist, so that's definitely where I stand. But when they did the movie

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Braveheart, I watched a director commentary on Braveheart and there are oxen that are used in that movie that you do not see today.

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And Mel Gibson, who is the director of the movie, said that there was a conservatory or I don't know what other word you would use, but some sort of like wildlife conservation.

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That's probably the word I want. Conservation. Right. That would preserve the certain species line of animals from certain generations.

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And so they had oxen that would have been from the period in which Braveheart had taken place.

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Oh, interesting. And so they borrowed those oxen. Wow. And so the oxen that you see in that movie actually were the oxen that were being used for that particular time period.

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But there are very, very few of them. They have like, you know, just a few dozen of them and they just breed them to keep them alive just for like, just I don't know, because someone needed a hobby,

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I guess. Well, apparently they came in handy. Right. But they have and they have these massive horns.

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They come like low. They don't bend upward like you think of a long horn steer. All right. They actually bend down.

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OK. And they come down low. It almost looks like it's wearing its own yoke. Wow. And and so these are animals that we just don't have around anymore.

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There are certain animals that had larger horns than others. And just because over a period of time or change in environment and different kinds of reasons, they did not need those horns.

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It's not that they became different animals. Right. They're still oxen. They just don't over, you know, because of breeding and things like that.

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They're just not that kind of oxen anymore. But survival of the fittest. Yeah. Kind of thing.

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So like the finches, the thing with the finches. Yeah. You didn't have a different bird just because the bird's beak size changed.

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Doesn't mean you had a completely new animal. They were still finches. Still birds. Same with the whole peppered moth.

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Yep. The whole peppered moth scenario, which actually turned out to be a hoax. But anyway, we won't get into all of that.

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So Daryl, there's an answer to your question. I do believe. And a lot more. Yeah. I do believe animals or dinosaurs are talked about in the

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Bible. Not just dinosaurs, but that which we would call dragons. And the fossils that we uncover, which are dinosaurs, would have been the dragons that the ancient people would have written about from various different cultures.

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No, I don't believe that they all died off in the flood because Moses was supposed to bring two of every kind of animal onto the ark.

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Those animals which were pure, he brought even more of those. But if you go to like the

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Creation Museum, the Ark Encounter, the first thing you see when you walk in is you see.

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Or no, dragons. You see dragons. Right, dragons. Dinosaurs, dragons. Well, no, when we were there, when we were there, they had a dragon exhibit.

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Oh, that's why. That's why. Okay, check. But the first thing. It was really cool. The first thing you see when you walk into the museum area is the

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Garden of Eden with dinosaurs in it. Yeah, with dinosaurs. Yeah. And I remember reading from Ken Ham when he said that when he started the

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Creation Museum, that's what he wanted people to see when they first walked in. He wanted them to see dinosaurs in the

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Garden of Eden. So you could see that this was not over a period of millions and millions of years that these things came about.

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But the fossils that we're uncovering now, which are dinosaurs, were all fossils that came about mostly, most of these fossils anyway, most all of them came about from the flood.

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There's a great documentary on Netflix, some of you know about this because you've emailed me about it. Yeah. In fact,

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I even heard from folks saying, go and see this in the theater. But there wasn't a theater anywhere near us that was showing it.

22:40

That's right. Yeah. But it's now on Netflix. So you can go on Netflix and watch it. It's called Is Genesis History?

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And you'll find out about paleontology and geology and how all of these things go with young earth creationism.

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How can we as young earth creationists understand a fossil record that purports to tell us these creatures that we're uncovering are hundreds of millions of years old?

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Right. So check out that documentary, Is Genesis History? Continuing on with the questions, more silly questions.

23:10

All right. So this next one, I have an odd question. So Daryl asked a silly question,

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James from somewhere in North America. There we go. That's what he put. Somewhere in North America. Woo! Has an odd question.

23:22

I have an odd question for you. What is your church building like? I have to be honest. I watch what videos and I've seen you on Wretched and it makes me think that you have like this high tech place with video monitors everywhere.

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Put me in my place and tell me that your building is not lavish and state of the art. Oh my goodness. You would be shocked.

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It is a humble abode. It is. We actually have a lot. It's well loved. We do have a lot of square footage and I've been told that the reason why there's so much area in our church is because there was a time they had like a huge outreach ministry to kids in the neighborhoods.

24:03

They had as many as 600 kids coming in that building, which is crazy. And I don't know what they would have done.

24:09

Our building's not that big. No, it's not. It's really not meant for that many. You can't put 200 people in the sanctuary.

24:16

That might've been before insurance cracked down. Right. Or the fire marshal.

24:23

No, you can only allow this many number of people in your building. Yes, that's way over max. But we have two wings.

24:30

We have the east wing and the west wing. The east wing runs east and west and the west wing runs north and south.

24:37

Correct. Kind of the rectangular shape of the building. It's like an L. Yeah, it's like an L shape. And it's in a really inconvenient spot on the plot of land that we have.

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The acre that we have or whatever it is. All the building is very much street side.

24:53

It was built in 1954. The east wing was in 54. And then

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I think the west wing was built eight years after that. So I think it was 62. And so the sanctuary was originally in the east wing.

25:07

And that's where most of our construction problems are. Oh, yes. Is in that east wing.

25:12

Big time. Because we put out on the podcast a couple of years ago that we were doing some major renovations on the building and we needed some donations.

25:20

We had to redo our roof. And so your contributions helped us with that. Oh, yeah. We don't have any more leaks.

25:27

Yeah. Yeah. Praise the Lord. I can now. We were catching things with trash cans.

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We were. Because buckets were overflowing. That's right. It was so bad. Up there on the stage had buckets that were catching water while I was preaching.

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Literally. It really was that bad. It was. So thank you for your donations. Because we resurfaced our roof.

25:45

We don't have that problem anymore. We've just recently redid the ceiling from the water damage.

25:52

All of that water damage. In the foyer. Yeah. So that's just getting finished up. We don't even have that finished up.

25:58

It's not polished yet. Yeah. Like, it's just finishing. We finished all the major things that we need to do.

26:04

There are still some small things here and there. And it's kind of like we do them as the time and the volunteers are available and as the money comes up.

26:13

Right. So we were able to do all of that debt -free. Our church has no debt. Praise the

26:19

Lord. And we're committed that whatever we do, we're going to do it debt -free. Unless there's something just emergency dire that we would have to take care of immediately, we're going to raise the money to do it and not take out loans for that.

26:32

When I first came on as pastor, we did have a significant amount of debt. Yeah, we did. And so I committed the church to, we're going to knock this debt out before we start raising funds for anything else or spending money on anything else.

26:45

And I think it was two years. Yeah. We knocked it out in two years. That went pretty quick. It was awesome. Yeah. We had some wonderful, generous people help us take care of that.

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So the roof has been taken care of. We got some front things that need to be painted, chip paint and stuff like that.

26:59

And probably just redone all together in some places. Yeah. Probably just need to strip the whole front of the building, take care of those problems.

27:06

You can visit our website and see a picture of it if you'd really like to. Yeah. There's some of it on there, fsbcjc .org

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or go to our, actually the better place to find it would be our Facebook page. Oh yeah, that's true. So you go to First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City.

27:20

I think it's facebook .com slash fsbcjc. I think so. And that will get you to our

27:27

Facebook page. If you click on the pictures section, I think we even have some of the pictures that we did when we redid the floor and the fellowship hall and stuff like that.

27:35

So it's an old building. It looks great. Adria has done a terrific job with the repainting efforts and stuff like that.

27:43

So she's made the most of what we have. And we take good care of it. And we want to be good stewards with what the

27:50

Lord has given to us. The building is always in use. Seems like almost every day of the week, somebody's using it.

27:56

And that's mostly even just within our congregation. A few years ago, we closed off the building to anybody can use it.

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If they contact us or they want to, you know, we even had like renter's fees, you got to pay this much, you got to pay for janitorial services.

28:10

We don't do that anymore. I did talk with somebody who specializes in these kinds of areas, like how a church should handle the usage of the building with the community, with the surrounding community and things like that.

28:24

And they discouraged me from being too open, especially in the climate of the chance of somebody coming in and saying, hey, we want to do a gay wedding.

28:33

And then we would have to say, no, well, you let all these other people do their weddings. Why won't you let us do ours?

28:39

So now it's you have to be a member of First Southern Baptist Church in order to have a wedding done there.

28:45

And the building usage is basically just limited to those who are already part of our church.

28:52

And yet, even though we've limited the usage of the building to just our congregation, it still gets very well used.

28:59

Oh, yes, definitely. So it's been a wonderful, it's in a wonderful location. We do have a very great spot.

29:05

But our traffic has been down. Location, location, location. On the street location.

29:12

Right. So, so we do have a good placement, the surrounding homes, communities near to us.

29:18

We're in a residential area, so it's not like a church. It's in a business area and people really have to drive to get to it.

29:24

But our traffic has been limited over the past year and a half. There is a bridge just to the west of us and it's a major traffic bridge.

29:33

It is. And they knocked it out and it was only supposed to take them nine months to reconstruct it.

29:38

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, my God. And it's been a year and a half. It's been so long. Well, the culvert that they had built underneath it in the first place for all the drainage, because they had to redo drainage in that area.

29:49

Right. Well, it collapsed. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. So when they dug out that culvert, they built it, they started filling it back in with dirt and it collapsed and they had to dig it back out and totally reconstruct it again.

30:01

I don't know what's taking them. Hopefully, they did it right the second time. Well, it's fine now. You can drive by it and it looks great.

30:08

Okay. But the bridge isn't surfaced yet. Oh, yeah. And I'm just going, why have they not surfaced that bridge yet? Yeah. So because the bridge has been closed, we don't get nearly the traffic that we used to.

30:18

Right. It used to be that over the course of a week, I'd have two dozen people come through my door. Right.

30:23

But now I see one or two people per week maybe. Yeah. Well, they couldn't even walk over to the other side.

30:30

You can't walk, let alone drive. Yeah. You know what I mean? Sometimes you can have access one way or another, but now you have to take a completely different route.

30:39

Yeah, you have to go clear around. Yeah. We still get quite a bit of cars that come by there, even with the detour, even though they have to go around, but we don't get as much foot traffic.

30:48

Right. And so that's why we haven't had as many persons coming through the door saying, hey, I just want to talk with somebody or pray with somebody or add questions about the site.

30:56

Do you have water? Especially in the summertime, people walking around and stopping in. And that was a great ministry outreach.

31:03

We have people just say, hey, I know I can stop by the church and ask for a drink and they'll give me some water or let me go to the bathroom. Yeah. And then

31:09

I could open right up with the gospel. Hey, you walked into my church. I'm going to preach to you, you know, preferably on their way.

31:16

Yeah. After they go to the bathroom. Preferably there. We do have so so James had asked if we're state of the art and have video monitors everywhere.

31:27

We have a TV downstairs. It's been there for like eight years.

31:32

We've not bought any new technology in quite some time. Right. It's been several years. It has.

31:37

But it's not like it's it's dinosaur. I mean, yeah, it's good quality. If you walked in and looked at our soundboard, you would think, oh, you just bought that last year or something.

31:46

You know, it's it's it's all still pretty decent stuff. But we have a big TV downstairs in the fellowship hall that can be used as overflow if we need it.

31:55

So somebody can go down there and see the sermon. We ran a coax cable down there. And so it plugs right into the monitor.

32:03

The upstairs behind the sanctuary, we've got a small library. Those of you who've been donating books, that's where that's that's where they're going into that library.

32:11

And there's a small TV in there. Okay. Somebody wants to sit quiet. They can still hear the sermon. And then behind the library is a cry room.

32:20

And there's a TV in there that's also showing the sermon. So as far as the TVs go, I think that's about it.

32:25

Well, we do have our projector behind you. So, yeah. And then there's the TV. And then there's the projector, which doesn't get used all the time.

32:33

No, I think the projector gets used once a month, maybe with lyrics. Right. And that's and that's when we decide to do songs that aren't in the hymnals.

32:41

Right. And this really is only something that we decided to do a year and a half ago. And it was out of necessity because the projector kept breaking.

32:49

Yeah. We had well, it was the projector at first. Then we replaced the projector and then the computers kept going out.

32:55

Oh, right. And it was so it was something in the wiring, the water leaked. Yeah. Got into our electronics.

33:01

There was a lot. All kinds of stuff ended up going bad. And so I finally I got sick and tired of technology. We got unplugged.

33:09

Yeah, we really did. There really was one Sunday I just was I was frustrated.

33:14

And I was like, I ain't going to mess with this. I'm not going to try to reboot this and get it going again before service starts.

33:20

So I got up there to the piano and I said, pull out your hymnal and turn to him. Number six. We're singing. Holy, holy, holy.

33:26

And that was that was how it started. And then we did that for several weeks. And after a while, we had people, even the young families coming up to us going,

33:35

I really like this. Yeah, I like the hymnals. Let's stick with that. It's a nice change. Now, I don't like the hymnal that we use and but we don't have the money to to buy new hymnals.

33:46

Yeah. It's just one of those things. Backburner. Yeah, it's a backburner thing. So I've got I love hymnals and I collect them on my shelf.

33:53

There's quite a few over there. The last two printings of the Baptist hymnal, other than the most recent one they did was 2005 or something like that.

34:02

So the one from 1991 and the one from 1973, I've got both of those hymnals and I would prefer those.

34:08

So we still have a few of them if they didn't get the old the old 73 hymnal is downstairs in the basement.

34:15

Oh, yeah. But we don't have the 91. The one from the 90s. So, hey, let me put this out there to you.

34:20

If you have some, we'd need about 100 of them. But if you got if you've got 100 hymnals of the old

34:27

Baptist hymnals, you'd be willing to get rid of. Not all in one box, though, preferably. Well, no.

34:33

Plus, you're going to create it. You can do that. Somebody wheel it in there. But yeah.

34:38

Hey, I'll take your Baptist hymnals. They would fit under our seats better. They would. Because the 2005.

34:44

These keep getting torn up. Yeah, these keep getting because they're so thick and they they you're they're very snug when you fit them under those seats.

34:53

They are. They're really tough. And so the and so because of that, they're starting to get torn up. But I don't like them anyway.

34:59

I really don't. You know, we sing not even half the songs. Yeah, we don't. There's 600 hymns in that hymnal.

35:05

And I actually went through it recently to try to figure out which hymns we would keep in that hymnal and which one's pages to rip out.

35:13

Yeah, we think about getting we think about 150 hymns out of that hymnal, 600 hymns, and we only sing about 150 of them.

35:20

So so anyway, hey, if you got the old Baptist hymnal, we'd love to take it from you. Or if somebody just wants to gift us with a bunch of grace notes, that'd be awesome.

35:30

The hymns of grace. That's what it is. Yeah. Grace notes. Grace notes. I was going to say grace notes. But that see that hymnal wouldn't fit under our seats either.

35:36

No. So that's probably not the one we should go with. Skinny one. It's going to be a skimney. Skimney hymnal. Skimney.

35:42

Skimney hymnal. All right. Last question. Well, thank you, James. Yeah. James, I hope you're satisfied with the the humility of our building and the ramblings of us.

35:51

That's right. We did get rid of our pews. We did. That was that was the second year that I was in our church.

35:59

And the pews ended up going to Haiti because there was a church that was devastated from that massive earthquake that happened, was it nine or ten years ago?

36:08

And so they got all of our pews and our big pulpit, which I actually regret.

36:13

I wish we had. No, you don't. Yeah. No, you don't. I liked that pulpit. You liked it. But you don't regret giving it to them.

36:20

Well, no. Right. That's true. I wanted to clarify. But there was a discussion about should we include the pulpit with it or not?

36:27

Uh -huh. And we went ahead and said, yeah, sure. Throw the pulpit in there. We kept the smaller one. I wish we'd had the big one. But yeah, it went to a good cause.

36:35

It did. It's being used. And that's totally fine. We got rid of the pews and we went with the stackable chairs because then our sanctuary is used as a multi -purpose room.

36:45

Right. We've had dinners in there before, even though that's primarily what the fellowship hall is for.

36:51

But we can. But these were more formal and you could use the overhead and the projector. Overhead.

36:58

Listen to me. Yeah. I'm so old school. Old transparencies. We're not that old.

37:04

We do have one down in the basement. That is true. That is true. We do have one of those transparency projectors, which

37:10

I just wonder why haven't we gotten rid of it? We've gotten rid of everything else that's old. I don't know why we haven't gotten rid of that yet.

37:16

Because people use it for drawing or painting pictures on the wall. They blow them up. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Doing the tracing and things like that.

37:22

That's true. Don't get rid of it. Okay. So, we can't. Cannot get rid of the overhead projector.

37:27

As long as it's still working. That's right. Waste not, want not. That's right. So, what was

37:33

I? Oh, yeah. So, we turned it into a multi -purpose room. So, in the wintertime, when the kids are playing games, they play them in.

37:39

And it gets dark too early. Right. It starts getting dark early pretty much by the time we start. Too cold. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

37:45

So, but otherwise, in the spring and in the early part of the fall, they're playing games outside. But when it gets cold, we bring everybody inside.

37:53

Last question. This one's from Stuart in North Carolina. Pastor Gabe, I have a stupid question to ask. Sweet. So.

37:59

Let's do it. Once again, our trend of silly questions today. Is it wrong for churches to have church signs where they put puns on their signs and silly quotes and that sort of thing?

38:10

I get a laugh out of some of the more ridiculous church signs that people do. But in the back of my mind,

38:15

I can't help but wonder if maybe that's not the best impression a church should be making on their community.

38:21

Well, thank you for your question, Stuart. We have a church sign. We do. We've got a sign out front. I can't remember what it was

38:27

I put on the sign, but a pastor's wife called me. Oh, yeah. And complained about it.

38:33

It was something about. The Bible says you're going to go to hell if you don't follow Jesus.

38:38

Yeah. Right. It was something like that. It was. It was very plain. Yeah. Because we have a smaller sign and it's.

38:44

It's just three rows. But it's not electronic. No. The light doesn't even work in it anymore.

38:51

Right. Because the transformer went out and we haven't bothered to spend the money to replace it.

38:57

But what do you call those? The letters that. I don't know what they're called. But yeah. But you get the idea.

39:03

Pull it off with a little suction cup thing and you put the new letters up there. With the right weather. Yeah. When the weather's nice.

39:10

Yeah. Can't be wet or those letters won't come off. Or windy. Or too cold. Because then

39:16

Gabe doesn't want to do it. It's pretty finicky. Or Gabe is. Well, that's true. Yeah. Because when that suction cup gets cold.

39:23

It doesn't. It doesn't stick to the letters. Anyway. So, yeah. Weather permitting, we changed the church sign. Which I haven't done in some time.

39:30

No, you haven't. It's okay, though. But the sign said something like that. You know, if you don't follow

39:35

Jesus, you're going to hell. And there was a. It was very lay on the plane kind of thing. Oh, I think it was about going to church.

39:42

It was about attending church. If you love God, you will love his church and you will go to church. It was something to that degree.

39:49

Well, see, that's what I was going to go with at first. But then you just kind of took off with it. Because I think that's what I changed it to after she complained about it.

39:56

Oh. Okay. So, anyway. Backtracking a little bit. Yeah. Bring it back.

40:02

We talked about brain farting earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway. So, the church sign.

40:08

This pastor's wife called and complained about it. And she's. I even remember at the start of the conversation, she said, now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're a

40:16

Calvinist church. And I said, no, we're not. And then she was kind of thrown off script at that point.

40:22

And I said, we do not have in our statement of faith that we are a Calvinist church. So, no, we're not.

40:28

And so, she was like, oh, okay. And really kind of struggled to come up with something after that.

40:33

Because I think she had something she was deliberately going to write. Practiced out or something. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even want to give her the pleasure of saying, now,

40:41

I'm more reformed in my soteriology, but we're not. Right. We're not a Calvinist church. So, then she went into saying that she had these unsaved friends that said to her how offensive that sign was.

40:53

And she said. Because they drove by it. They drove by it. Right. And she said, I just don't think you're making a good impression on the community.

40:59

You know, what does this mean to people who aren't saved? And I said, well, ma 'am, you're a pastor's wife. And she said, yes.

41:05

And told me the church even. Where it was from. It wasn't in town. It was one of the outlying communities. Right. Outside of Junction City.

41:11

And I said, the reason why this offends them is because they're natural minded.

41:18

They do not understand spiritual things. This is 1 Corinthians 2 .14. And I said, ma 'am, this is basic stuff.

41:24

Like I'm telling you things that you should understand. Right. And she said, well,

41:30

I'm not going to have an argument with you about it. But then proceeded to argue about it. And I tried to tell her, I'm helping you know how to respond to these individuals.

41:39

Because if they came in my church and said to me, I'm offended by your sign. This is exactly what I would be telling them. Well, you're offended by it because you're not spiritually minded.

41:48

You don't love the church. That's why you're not attending church. And so, therefore, what the sign is saying about you is that you stand in judgment before God because you have not yet been reconciled to God or to his body.

42:04

That's why you're offended by this. And so, anyway, she didn't see it my way. I did end up changing the sign.

42:11

And then it was something to the effect of, if you don't follow Jesus, you're going to hell. It was a little bit more.

42:19

So I do try to be evangelistic with the sign. And sometimes

42:24

I'm cute. I won't say that I've never been punny with the sign before. I've done some things like that.

42:30

There are some appropriate ways to do that. And there are some inappropriate ways to do that. And I would say irreverent is probably the good word for it.

42:39

So there's a way in which that can be honoring to God, or it can even be ministering to the community.

42:45

And then there are ways in which that just becomes irreverent language. It's not honoring to God, and it certainly doesn't benefit others, doesn't give a good impression of what the church is supposed to be for the community.

42:56

And some of them are just downright funny. I love the bloopers, like the blooper signs. Here's one from St.

43:02

Paul United Church of Christ, which is a very liberal church anyway. Best sausage supper in St.

43:07

Louis. Come and eat Pastor Thomas Ressler. Oh dear. The benefit of a comma.

43:16

Yes. Or just not leaving, or just leaving the pastor's name off.

43:22

That would have been better. Yeah, you know. Yeah. Anyway, these are, by the way, I'm not calling anybody out with these.

43:29

These are basic signs that you can do through just a generic Google search, Google image search. This one is a common church blooper.

43:37

I've seen this one a few times. Don't let worries kill you. Let the church help. Oh dear.

43:45

Bethlehem United Methodist Church. We're all about that grace, about that grace, no devil. Oh my goodness.

43:51

Becky's got her face in her hands. Oh. Oh dear. She totally facepalmed.

43:57

I did. Now, this one I like. I have to say that I like this one, because we were just talking about it.

44:03

Too cold to change the sign. Message inside. Amen. There are days.

44:10

See, that's totally appropriate. I like that one, quite frankly. I like this one too.

44:17

I do have to say I like this. I like this sign. Whoever stole our AC units, keep it. It's hot where you're going.

44:23

Oh yeah. I like that one. Adam and Eve, the first people to not read the

44:29

Apple Terms and Conditions. Oh my goodness. I like that one too. That's clever.

44:38

Oh, that is, that is a good one. Forbidden fruits create many jams.

44:44

I could go either way on that one. Choose the bread of life or you are toast.

44:50

Oh, I like that one. That's cute. I like it when that involves food. Toast. Yeah.

44:56

Becky likes the food sign. I like toast. And this one's cute too.

45:02

Seven days without prayer makes one week. W -E -A -K. Uh -huh. I like that one.

45:07

Now, so here's an example of one that is irreverent. Keep using my name in vain and I'll make rush hour longer.

45:16

God. Oh. See, that's irreverent because it makes it sound like God's just out to pick on you or bully you.

45:23

Right. It's not honoring of God with a sign like that. This one also, this is incredibly irreverent.

45:29

I hate this church, Satan. Oh? Why do you need to do that? Why quote

45:35

Satan? Why are you quoting Satan on your sign? By the way, when we were heading to Florida on vacation two months ago,

45:43

I was first looking around the area for a church that we could attend. And there was a

45:50

Baptist church in the local area and I looked it up on Google Maps where it was located.

45:56

Uh -huh. And you do the whole street view thing. Right. To, you know, see what the parking lot is like and what the streets like when you come down to find the church.

46:03

Uh -huh. And so, I wondered if from that street view if I could see the church's sign. Uh -huh. I saw the building.

46:08

I was like, okay, pretty conveniently located, easy to get to. I saw the church's sign and so I tried zooming in on the sign to read what the sign said.

46:17

Uh -huh. This church, a Southern Baptist church, was quoting Leo Tolstoy.

46:22

Oh, boy. On their church sign. Okay. So, I saw that. It was the quote and it said

46:28

Leo Tolstoy. That was their church sign. Oh, okay. And I was like, not taking my family there for a church.

46:36

So, anyway. That's a big no. So, there's some examples for you, you know, examples of church signs

46:42

I think could be pretty cute. Quoting a Bible passage on there is always pretty good. You know, most of the time I'll find the short quotes.

46:48

Always pretty good. Always pretty good. What's that? With a Bible verse. Yeah, it's always pretty good.

46:53

Quote a verse on there. I think it's wonderful. Not just pretty good. Okay. All right.

46:59

I got a piety punch from my wife there. I know. Yes. It's all right. That's always a safe thing to go with.

47:08

Yes, there you go. Put a Bible verse on. I like finding the short quotes from Spurgeon because he's always very direct and will really knock you over the head.

47:17

Yeah, he's very quippy. I like finding Spurgeon's short quotes and seeing if I can't put that on the sign somehow.

47:23

So, that's always real good too. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with doing church signs, but there can be ways in which it gets very irreverent, very generic.

47:32

When you're trying to be cute rather than trying to minister,

47:38

I think that your priorities are probably not in order, even when it comes to the way you do your church sign.

47:46

So, that's it. Was that my last question? Yeah, that was it. Oh, I wrote this line down. I wrote this line down and forgot to mention it.

47:52

I've seen this on a church sign before. I've actually seen it with my own eyes. Okay. And I also found it in one of those happy verse calendars.

48:00

Okay. It's like - Embracing myself. Daily, it'll give you a new verse for the day or something like that, and I took a picture of it on my phone.

48:07

So, somewhere in my picture library, I've got a picture of this, but it was quoting Luke 4 7, if you then will worship me, it will all be yours.

48:18

Who said that? Satan did. Yes, he did.

48:24

I've seen that on a church sign. I've actually seen it and even saw it in one of those little flip calendars.

48:31

Well, that's like that mug that said about the friends, supposed to be like super sweet between friends.

48:37

And anyway, it was about two enemies and it was not what it was supposed to be about at all, but they like made it into this heart and real cutesy thing.

48:47

It's like, oh dear. Oh, funny. So, it was supposed to be, it was actually referring to two enemies, but somebody had taken it and made it about friends or something like that?

48:55

Is that what it was? Yeah, because I don't remember which verse it was. This is driving me crazy. Maybe Sonya remembers.

49:01

The joke's lost because you don't - The joke's been lost. I'll have to ask Sonya if she remembers. It's so funny just how out of context, you know, like the whole

49:12

Satan thing, it can really make your day until you figure it out and you're like, oh dear.

49:20

This is why we do When We Understand the Text, to help you understand the Bible in context. Exactly.

49:25

So, thank you for listening and for your questions. You can submit questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

49:32

Let's pray. Yes, let's. Our wonderful God and Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have done for us.

49:39

Salvation in Christ Jesus, giving us the gift of life, giving us more than we could possibly deserve, more than we certainly deserve and more than we could ever ask for.

49:51

The eternal life that we have in Christ for all who believe in his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

49:58

All who believe in Jesus will not perish, but will have everlasting life. And I pray that the joy of this message that fills our hearts would overflow into preaching the gospel to others that they may also hear and would turn from sin and believe in Christ and be saved.

50:17

Give us courage to do these things that we would not be ashamed of our faith, for we know that it is the power of the gospel that saves for all who believe it.

50:28

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Put it on silent.

51:36

Yeah, now I am. Okay. So I was playing the video for Zeke and he started going, too loud, too loud.

51:44

I'm telling you. So I had to turn the headphones way down. It is way louder than you think because you're just used to it.

51:53

Sounds fine to me. I know. I like hearing those little nuances, little subtleties in your voice.

52:02

Yes. Every... Yeah, especially when you're chewing in the microphone. I really like that.